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So anybody who knows me, KNOWS that I absolutely like LOVE to exercise. I just started to take up running but usually you can find me lifting in the gym. So obviously I spread my love for exercise along to my students. It’s so funny, because at the end of last year, one of my end of the year gifts was a NIKE workout shirt and NIKE headbands.  See…my students know exercise = Ms. Monroe. Anyways, enough of  MY obsession with fitness.

I believe it is SO important for kids to be exposed to health and fitness in the classroom, at school, and at home.  As teachers, we are these kids second parents (for some, we ARE their parents), so we have the biggest influence on our students. If we instill in them the importance of health and fitness, they will be healthier kids emotionally, physically, and mentally.  There are so many studies that correlate exercise to intelligence.

SO HOW CAN WE INTEGRATE HEALTH AND FITNESS INTO OUR CLASSROOM?
The county I work in has a great fantastic health program called SHIP (School Health Initiative Program).  We have SHIP teachers who come into our classrooms once a week and model lessons that incorporate health and fitness.  We are so lucky to have such wonderful SHIP teachers to be great examples for our students and teach them about the importance of health and fitness…and guess what….THE KIDS LOVE IT!

There are so many games and activities you can use in your classroom to promote healthy eating and exercise.

# 1
Easy things like…whenever you do snacks or activities with food, try and use healthy snacks such as fruit, dried fruit, vegetables, pretzels, water, granola, etc.  Another super easy thing that I do with my math word problems is use real life examples that describes my healthy life.

For example:  Ms. Monroe went to the Farmers Market and bought 9 egg plants, 10 green peppers, and 7 cucumbers. How many vegetables did Ms. Monroe buy at the Farmers Market.

Another example:  Ms. Monroe went to the gym at 5:00pm. She exercised for 2 hours.  What time did Ms. Monroe leave the gym?

# 2
Give your students brain breaks! In the middle of a lesson, have your students stand up and perform an exercise, just to get them moving! I have a set of cards (that my wonderful SHIP teacher bought for me) with different exercises, and I will simply have a student come up and pick a card, and the entire class will perform the exercise. This will help them regain focus…and of course…THEY LOVE IT!


# 3

 Play games! There are so many games that involve getting our students moving! Here is a game that I’ve created, called Sight Word Money Fitness. You can grab this HERE at my TPT Store or HERE at my Teachers Notebook Store.

How To Play: Well it’s simple.
Students can play this independently or with a partner.  Each person or set of partners gets one alphabet key, one game board, tub of coins, and the set of playing cards (each set is labeled with a letter, so all pieces with the letter A on it, are used together).  

Students will look at the gameboard and notice the first sight word. Example: The word “might”. The student will then use the alphabet key to get the coins that match the letter. Example: For the letter “m” the student would get a dime. They would continue this process until they’ve spelled out the entire word. Then, the student would count the total amount of coins for that word, find the matching card with that value and perform the exercise. They would do this for the entire gameboard ( 5 sightwords per gameboard). 

# 4

 Complete worksheets….oh but these aren’t plain old worksheets. These include…..EXERCISES AT THE END! 🙂  

I created these because students need that paper pencil practice to reinforce a concept, but I thought I would make it fun by adding an exercise for them to do when they are finished. It’s called…What’s My Mystery Exercise? I’ve only created sheets that go along with Place Value for 1st and 2nd grade. i will be creating them for every math topic, so stay tuned for these!
Click HERE to grab this Place Value Mystery Exercise Set. You can also grab this HERE at my Teachers Notebook store.  There are 8 activities, all include answer keys. Concepts include: Identifying the value of the underlined digit, identifying the expanded form of a number, reading the word form of a number and finding the standard form, and identifying the value of base ten blocks.  
Basically, students will answer questions 1-8, then find the answer in the KEY, and will have to write the corresponding letter in the Mystery Exercise Box.  At the end, the students will “crack the code” and will be given an exercise!  So, after sitting and answering questions, we are giving the kids a break by allowing them to perform an exercise!



The first two people to comment get What’s My Mystery Exercise: Place Value for free! Don’t forget to leave your email.


Happy “Health and Fitness” Teaching!
<3 The Teacher Wears Prada



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